rumours that the Australian Commonwealth delegates have been sent death threats. Their arts minister, Carreras, has scheduled another press conference complaining about the lack of security he’s experienced, in order to embarrass our government into official action.”
“We haven’t established a positive connection between – ”
“Did you know that, until this morning at least, the minister was staying at the Savoy?”
“Yes, I was aware of that.”
“Were you also aware that he attended the theatre last night?”
Bryant felt a crawling sensation in his gut. “At the Coliseum?”
“The very same. Box L.”
The box exactly facing the one in which Bella Whitstable was taken ill. Anger rose within him. There was a pattern here. Why could he not see it?
“We’ll step up our inquiries,” he promised, knowing that it would now be necessary to call a press conference. He would schedule it for late this afternoon. But first, there was a murder to reconstruct.
On his way out of the office, he walked into Jerry Gates. She had come up to the Mornington Crescent unit in her lunch break, and was still wearing her hotel uniform.
“What are you doing here?” He frowned at her in displeasure.
“You said you might need to talk to me again.”
“I said I’d call you when I was ready. How did you get in?”
“Sergeant Longbright admitted me. I want to help. I know there’s been another one. If you’d just listen to me for a minute – ”
“Miss Gates, neither I nor my partner has a moment to spare right now. Please, go back to work and leave it to us to take the appropriate steps.”
¦
They met in the foyer of the Coliseum, a forlorn, dripping crowd in suits and raincoats, like a party of tourists gathered for a particularly unpopular sightseeing tour. Bereft of their finery they seemed smaller and less significant. They awkwardly offered their condolences to Bryant as if attending the wake before the funeral.
“I’m afraid I must ask you all to come back to the box, and it will be necessary for you to don your outfits once more. It seems morbid, I know, but it’s necessary to recreate the exact circumstances under which Bella Whitstable died. It may help us to understand what happened.”
Below them, rehearsals continued as the Savoyards struggled back into armour and hose. Bryant stood patiently at the rear of the box with a smirking police photographer while the group dressed. Then he directed them to their places, marking the seat in which Bella collapsed.
“All right,” he said, raising his hands for silence. “How many members do we have here?”
“There are twenty-two of us,” said Oliver Pettigrew. “There are more in the society, but we vary in number according to each production. Principal cast members can’t be duplicated, and the main cast of
“So what does that make the rest of you?”
“Courtiers, Soldiers and Daughters of the Plough.”
“I want everyone to take the positions they held last night, at the time when it was first noticed that Mrs Whitstable was feeling unwell,” Bryant requested. There followed much shuffling and pulling free of snagged cloaks.
“Wait,” said Bryant, “there’s somebody missing.” The Savoyards looked at one another, then back at the elderly detective. “There was a little beggar in a hat standing against the wall.”
“Are you sure?” asked Pettigrew. “There aren’t any beggars listed in the cast of
“I distinctly remember seeing him there,” said Bryant. “A tattered man. Surely someone else must have noticed him.” He searched the surrounding faces, positive that the assassin had been discovered, but the Savoyards rubbed their chins and shook their heads. He looked back at the empty chair where Bella had collapsed, and the spot beside it where she had put down her handbag. What could the beggar have done to cause her death?
As he moved toward the door of the box he turned back to the assembled group, who were still watching him and waiting for guidance.
“Thank you for coming,” he told the semicircle of baffled faces. “Please check that the constable here has your personal details written down correctly, and we’ll get back to you if there are any further developments.”
And with that he hastily left the theatre.
¦
“They found no trace of strychnine in the champagne?”
“None whatsoever,” said Raymond Land. “What’s on your mind?” Bryant had blasted into his office like a rainy night and was proceeding to soak everything with his umbrella and overcoat.
“I was thinking about strychnine,” he explained. “Such an old-fashioned poison. It’s fairly fast-acting, so it would have to have been administered within the theatre box. Why would the murderer make things so difficult for himself? Why pick a drug with such a startling effect, and risk capture by still being on the premises when she began to convulse?”
He dumped a large opaque plastic bag on Land’s desk.
“You’d have to be very sure of your method of administration, wouldn’t you?”
He carefully opened the evidence envelope and withdrew Bella Whitstable’s handbag, still covered in fingerprint dust. “When I saw her initial symptoms,” he continued, “I knew that something was paralysing her muscles. Strychnine poisoning starts in the face and neck.” He fished about in the bag and withdrew an object in a bony fist. “How does it look if you buy it in the form of, say, rat poison?”
“It’s a powder,” said Land. “Crystalline and colourless.”
“And it can kill on contact with the skin or the eyes.”
He opened his hand to reveal a powder compact. “She applied it herself when she freshened her make-up in the intermission. We’ll run print matches, but it’s likely our beggarman dipped into her bag and doctored the compact while we were watching the first act.”
Land took the compact from Bryant’s outstretched hand and carefully opened it. Beneath the face pad lay a pool of granules which appeared slightly more crystalline than the fine pink powder below it. “Well, I’ll be damned. Someone’s been reading Agatha bleeding Christie.” He looked up at Bryant in amazement.
? Seventy-Seven Clocks ?
14
Occultation
Joseph shone the torch across a paint-streaked brick wall, then up into a network of distant blackened rafters. “Come on. It’s safe.”
“I have a problem with the dark,” she said, peering ahead. “It’s a stupid phobia. If there’s a light somewhere I’m okay.”
“There’s a junction box here that controls the lights.” The torch beam picked up a grey steel cabinet with electrical warning stickers pasted to the doors. “All the structural repair work has been completed, but I’m still not supposed to bring anyone else in here. If you fall through the floor you’re not covered by the insurance.”
They had entered the site of the Savoy Theatre through the wooden surround that encased the redbrick and Portland stone of the building’s ground floor. Joseph wrenched open a door of the cabinet and flicked a row of switches. A handful of dim emergency bulbs threw amber pools of light across the auditorium. Jerry tried to relax her breathing, not daring to think about the surrounding darkness.
Part of the interior of the theatre was still blackened and fire-ravaged, but the proscenium arch and the stage beyond it had been fully restored, and waited under sheets of heavy plastic to be unveiled once more before an audience.
